Klonoa is back on GBA for another slightly better Adventure.
Klonoa task is to navigate his way through a serious of various worlds. He can walk and jump and at the end of his jumps he can hover for a minute. The most important of his powers though is being able to capture enemies with wind bullets fired from a magic ring he has. The captured enemies each have different properties. Some can be thrown at other enemies or used to give Klonoa an added boost to his jumps. Others are timed bombs used to break otherwise immovable blocks or hold down switches while Klonoa scrambles to get through a door. Still others will launch Klonoa high into the air and that's only about half of them. Figuring out how to use the enemies to Klonoa's advantage is the central aspect of Klonoa's game play and the most compelling.
The earlier levels are a breeze but by the last world, the puzzles reach a considerable level of challenge w/o ever really being frustrating. There is a bit in the way of tricky timing here or there, esp. on later levels but the real heart of the game is the problem solving you need to do to get past various obstacles. On each level, there are various collectables that Klonoa can collect to unlock additional levels in the world and some added bonus content as well. Even just collecting enough to get through the game offers a good amount of difficulty but trying to get 100% is somewhat more difficult still.
This is even more true on boss battles and the various special stages. Most of these can be beaten in a few tries but collecting all items on them is just plain exasperating at times. The quick paced auto-scrolling and 3D snowboarding levels just don't really fit in w/ the rest of gameplay and are quite frustrating at times. Similarly, most boss battles are races that don't offer many puzzle solving elements. Done right, this could have added depth and variety to gameplay but here it just broke the flow between puzzle levels and really seem to subtract rather than add to the core mechanics of the game.
Only the boss battles absolutely must be completed though to simply finish the game so Klonoa is overall quite fun and satisfying to play though. It will take a good half dozen hours for most people and those wishing to really finish everything could take three times that or more depending on their particular level of hand-eye coordination. Play it as you will, Klonoa 2 is a good time and one of the better platformers on GBA.